


Gold-digger

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Doppelganger, Gen, Gold-digger, Post Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5475353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Debts are paid in the wake of events on Gauda Prime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gold-digger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lost_spook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/gifts).



The box of credits chips clacked in a distinctive way as he put it down on the dry grass outside the Gauda Prime base. Soolin looked up at Avon as he sat next to her; he chose not to look back at her.

“What’s that for?” she prompted when he continued to say nothing.

“Payment,” he said. “At a rate of five hundred a day, for one hundred and fifty-six days, plus another five hundred for each day involving combat or other high-risk ventures. All in all, a fairly respectable fee. I hope it doesn’t disappoint you. I know other employers have paid you more for less.”

Soolin was an exceptional gunfighter because she had a firm handle on her temper. She was able to coolly assess most situations while others were led astray by anger, but she wasn’t completely emotionless. She lived by a moral code, and one thing that never failed to upset her was other people accusing her of acting from base motives when she knew she had been fair and just – Tarrant accusing her of jealousy towards Piri, for example, when anyone could see the girl was distracting them (on purpose, as it turned out) and working herself up over nothing.

Soolin had come to Gauda Prime, the one place in the galaxy she most wished to avoid, because Avon had promised that Blake would be there. Soolin had never met Blake, but she knew how important he was to at least two of the crew, and she knew that they all needed direction after the destruction of Xenon. She had not agreed to re-visit her childhood trauma simply to earn herself another thousand credits.

“You think I did it for the _money_?”

“No,” Avon said listlessly. He still hadn’t looked at her. “You be a fool if you did, since I’ve never shown any signs of having any. But you might as well take it now, since I have it and I have nothing else to do with it.” 

Her anger faded as quickly as it had come. A more elaborate apology wouldn’t have done nearly so well as a flat admission that he hadn’t misjudged her – he had just done the wrong thing yet again. He was good at that.

“I hear you need a new ship,” Soolin suggested, more kindly.

Roughly a hundred thousand credits wasn’t enough to get anything good, but Scorpio hadn’t exactly been good and Avon had been able to live with that.

“Who would I buy it from?” Avon said. “Gauda Prime isn’t exactly a thriving economy, and then I’d have to get it out through the blockade. I’m also not sure I do need a new ship – I don’t have anything particular to do with it, except get myself killed running the blockade and I daresay even I can get myself killed without spending quite so much money.”

“You’re not saying you want to die – Avon, it was an accident.”

“No, I don’t want to die,” Avon said, eyes flicking shut, as though that would help him forget the terrible scene in the tracking gallery. “I just can’t think of anything else to do.”

Gauda Prime had supposedly been the answer to that question, at least for him. From there, he’d imagined he could be given new answers and new orders. Soolin could understand that, and how aimless he felt now. She, too, found it a comfort to work on other people’s plans, as long as she agreed with them. She supposed that without Avon leading them from one seemingly brilliant idea to another she would likewise have think of something else to do.

For something to do _now_ , while Avon worked out what he’d come here to say, she opened the box. She’d hadn’t doubted that he was telling the truth about what was inside, but it was one thing simply to know and to hear the sound of the chips clicking together; it was quite another to see rows and rows of thousand-credit markers stacked neatly together. She whistled, and shut the box again.

“They’re genuine.”

“So I’m told,” Avon said.

“So where did you get them? I’d have noticed if you’d had a hundred thousand credits stashed on the Scorpio somewhere. Vila certainly would have.”

Avon’s mouth flickered slightly. “Blake,” he said.

For a moment, Soolin thought that was it, all he was going to say, but then Avon continued, “He set my day rate at something considerably lower than yours, but as we’d never officially negotiated I didn’t argue.”

Soolin rolled her eyes. Sometimes she thought she and Avon were quite similar, and that was why they got on fairly well; other times, right now for example, it was clear that Avon was only pretending to be that person. She thought, then, that perhaps she liked him for suggesting that there was more to her than most people saw, as it was clear, sometimes there was to him. It didn’t stop this from being embarrassing, though. He was upset, but that was no reason to behave like such an idiot.

“So you supported him in the hope of financial gain, did you?” she said briskly.

At last, Avon turned to look at her – his best sardonic stare fixed in place. “What do you think?”

“I think you should tell him the same thing I told you – the money’s an insult, and if you don’t want to be shot a second time you won’t try to buy my loyalty again.”

Avon blinked. “You’ve never shot me.”

“Not yet,” Soolin said. She picked the box up, and dumped it in Avon’s lap. “Give the money back to Blake. Tell him you’re staying, that you shot him for reasons that were at least partly his fault, and that you’re sure he has better things to spend his money on than making a point that doesn’t need to be made.”

She watched as Avon’s face went through a number of bizarre contortions – presumably he was stopping himself from making a number of pitiful objections to her plan, before he eventually smoothed his face out again.

“All right.”

He stood up, the box of credits in his hands. There was still a lingering hesitance in him, though, because he looked back down at her.

“When I tell Blake about the reasons he’d be an idiot to push me away, I assume I can list your skills amongst my assets?”

“What do you think?” Soolin said flatly.

Avon smiled slightly. “I think I’d shouldn’t insult you by doubting your loyalty a second time. Let’s hope Blake’s in a similar mood.”

Soolin allowed herself to smile as she heard him walk away. She would have hated to have been wrong about the man she’d followed for almost half a year; not as much as Avon had hated it, but then it had been longer for him, and he had less control over his emotions. Fortunately, like him, there had been nothing she wanted to do with the money. Soolin knew Gauda Prime well. Everything that was worth having was here in this base, and none of it was for sale.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Avon / Soolin - mirrors and doubles & gold digger


End file.
